A driver ran a light and killed the man they love. They’re waiting for justice years later 53%
By George Kelly21% Michael McLaughlin17%
7/17/2026, 1:00:00 PM
BS Summary: This article contains 35 faulty reasoning types, including Negativity Bias, Appeal to Authority, and Confirmation Bias, with Appeal to Emotion as the most egregious example at 31.3% saturation with 457 hits. Analysis detected 3,743 faulty-reasoning hits from 1,458 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 52.1% and a BS Rank of 53% (8,075 of 17,192 articles). This article is worse (more manipulative) than 53.00% of the article peer group.
On a Saturday night in October 2021, Paul McManus rode his 2014 KTM Enduro motorcycle home from a James Taylor concert at Chase Center and crossed an intersection in the Mission on a green light.
He never made it home.
Breanna Gordon ran a red light in her 2018 Jeep Compass at 16th and Harrison streets and struck McManus, according to court records.
McManus, a native Australian who had built a life in San Francisco’s tech world and ocean-conservation community, was 40.
He left behind his wife of one year.
Nearly five years later, his relatives are still waiting for Gordon to stand trial for vehicular manslaughter.
She has failed to appear in court at least four times and cycled in and out of custody on bench warrants, which judges issue when defendants skip mandatory court appearances.
The revolving door spun again when Gordon was jailed on Memorial Day in San Francisco before being released within days.
A law enforcement source said she was brought to San Francisco after being arrested in Bakersfield.
Court records there say she violated probation in a misdemeanor drug case May 20.
To McManus’ widow and sister, the case shows how easy it is for defendants to walk away from justice.
“It’s like you can just go away and kill somebody, and nothing happens,” said Sarah Danielson, McManus’ younger sister, who traveled from Melbourne and spoke alongside his widow, Fernanda Schlender McManus, last month in Santa Cruz.
Family members say the district attorney’s office told them it could not answer whether Gordon was tested for drugs or alcohol the night of the crash, citing the active case.
Because Gordon faces a misdemeanor charge, she has remained eligible for release, despite the death and her repeated failures to appear in court.
It’s not just Gordon who’s skipping court appearances.
Out of more than 14,000 pending criminal felony and misdemeanor cases in San Francisco Superior Court this month, more than 6,000 were in fugitive status, with bench warrants for defendants who missed court dates, according to the DA’s office.
The office said that under the state Supreme Court ruling in the case of In re Kowalczyk, handed down in April, prosecutors are barred from seeking unaffordable bail to keep a defendant in custody on any misdemeanor.
Gordon has waived her right to a speedy trial, and her next court date, a pretrial conference, is set for Oct.
7.
From there, it will most likely be months or longer before the case goes to trial.
“The defense controls the timeline of a case, they have a right to speedy trial which they can waive to suit their purpose at any time,” the DA’s office said in a statement.
“Victims and prosecutors have very little recourse when the defense strategically delays cases, sometimes even for years.”
Gordon could not be reached for comment.
A deputy public defender who represents her, Maria Avalos Cruz, acknowledged that the case is tragic and that delays cause pain to the families involved.
“This case began during the height of the COVID pandemic when proceedings in San Francisco Superior Court were at a virtual standstill, and hundreds of cases, including this one, were backlogged and greatly delayed,” Avalos Cruz said in a statement.
“Ms.
Gordon is entitled to due process, we remain committed to defending and supporting her as this case proceeds toward trial.”
“Victims and prosecutors have very little recourse when the defense strategically delays cases, sometimes even for years.”
Court records show a case that has stalled and restarted repeatedly.
The criminal case was filed in December 2021.
Within days, Gordon failed to appear, and the court issued a bench warrant, setting bail at $20,000; the warrant was recalled the following week at the request of her defense, and she entered a plea of not guilty.
The case then moved through more than two years of legal minutiae before a jury trial was set for June 2024.
Gordon did not appear, and the court issued another bench warrant that remained outstanding for just over a year.
Court records show she was later taken into custody by San Francisco sheriff’s deputies, but the pattern repeated: another failure to appear, another warrant.
After her most recent arrest, on May 25, the court accepted her choice to waive a speedy trial and released her under the supervision of the San Francisco Pretrial Diversion Project.
She is required to report regularly as a condition of that release, but a district attorney’s office spokesperson could not say whether she was doing so.
Gordon’s criminal record spans the state.
Kern County court records show seven traffic infraction cases from 2008 to 2015, two of which remain open, as well as a 2011 misdemeanor DUI arrest, a 2015 misdemeanor drug offense, and three probation violations from 2012 to 2015.
Madera County records list a 2017 family law case, while in Fresno County she faces a pending 2021 misdemeanor drug case.
The dates and circumstances of Gordon’s most recent arrest remain partly unclear.
The San Francisco Sheriff’s Department declined to release information about the arrest and booking, and the San Francisco Police Department referred questions to the sheriff’s office.
McManus’ family is dumbfounded by Gordon’s cycle of arrest and release, saying it appears that no one wants to hold her accountable for claiming a life.
After Gordon stopped appearing in court, Danielson said, the family was told authorities would not actively pursue her because the case was charged as a misdemeanor, and she would be picked up only if stopped for some other reason.
Frustrated, the family considered hiring a private investigator to locate her, before deciding against it in hopes that the system would work on its own.
With the criminal case stalled, Schlender McManus sued Gordon in 2024 over the damages to her late husband’s motorcycle.
But Gordon was again nowhere to be found.
Her father described her as homeless, without a fixed address or contact information.
According to a court declaration, the property-damage claim was settled in mid-2025 with Gordon’s insurer.
“The system fails,” Schlender McManus’ attorney James Wagstaffe said when consequential cases charged as misdemeanors allow failures to appear.
“Breanna Gordon got her car back before Paul’s motorbike was released from police custody,” Schlender McManus said, expressing fears about Gordon’s return to the road.
“They gave her car back, and they had Paul’s bike for, I want to say it was, like, almost a year.
So it’s, like, why wasn’t her car in forensic evidence for a year?”
There were 27 traffic deaths in San Francisco in 2021, the year McManus was killed.
Eliminating fatalities on streets has been a difficult goal for the city.
There have been 15 traffic deaths this year, according to city data and pedestrian advocates WalkSF.
What the family wants from the criminal case, they said, is narrow.
“I don’t need her to go sit behind bars for the rest of her life,” Schlender McManus said.
From the start, she said, she has asked only that Gordon lose her license so she cannot be in a position to kill again, and that she perform community service.
The family’s deeper fear, they said, is that the case will be diverted or dismissed entirely, leaving nothing on Gordon’s record — an outcome a prosecutor told them was possible given the delays.
Schlender McManus and Danielson described a husband and brother who remains very much alive in cherished memories and treasured totems: a valedictorian and competitive math student turned tech worker, diver, and mentor.
More than 200 people gathered on a beach for his Nov. 12, 2021 memorial, flying in from Australia, Canada, and across the United States.
Mourners poured some 240 shots of bourbon — a nod to the single fancy sip he allowed himself, despite the headache it gave him — and held a paddle-out in his memory.
Schlender McManus wears three tattoos drawn from his handwriting and one of a hammerhead shark, his favorite animal.
Schlender McManus said describing her husband is the hardest and easiest question to answer.
“It’s like every cliche you could imagine.
He was loving.
Protective.
Caring.
Very silly.
Yeah, he cared so deeply about everyone that was in his orbit.”
She remembered him as “adventurous, generous.
We gave each other a lot of independence, which was really important, I think, for both of us.
He lived life to the max.
… We found comfort in the fact that, for every one year that we live on this Earth, he probably lived like five.
So, in Paul years, he was actually probably 200.”
Gordon is scheduled to appear for a hearing on the vehicular manslaughter charge Oct.
7.
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